Capt Amarinder Singh may take on Jaitley in Amritsar

Congress may field former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh to take on BJP leader Arun Jaitley in Amritsar.

Amrinder is arriving in New Delhi tonight and could meet party chief Sonia Gandhi on Thursday.

Sources said that the Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa, who is considered not to be on best of his terms with the former CM, has also told the party leadership that the former Punjab CM could be a formidable candidate to take on Jaitley.

The BJP had on Saturday announced the candidature of Jaitley from the seat replacing its sitting MP Navjot Singh Sidhu.

Sidhu, who was offered other seats, had refused, saying he would not contest the Lok Sabha polls at all if not fielded from Amritsar.

Sidhu, a three-term BJP MP from Amritsar, had been at loggerheads with the ruling ally Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab for some time now.

The Congress on Tuesday declared the candidature of Bajwa from his Gurdaspur seat. There were reports earlier that Bajwa wanted to contest from some other seat. Bajwa had defeated four-time BJP MP and Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna from the seat.

For the Gurdaspur seat, BJP is yet to choose between Khanna and businessman Swaran Salaria.